Ascent
by lynxzpanther
Summary: Spoiler Alert: Dean is broken when The Great Wall of Sam collapses. Minor slash, Destiel, Hurt/Comfort with a bit of Valentine's fluff thrown in. One-shot. Luvs!


**This fic is a present for my friend, Desi, on Valentine's Day. I apologize that it gets less eloquent towards the end; a headache and time constraint will do that to you. XP Thank you for reading!**

**Happy Valentine's Day! **

**Warnings: Spoilers up to present. Also, slash, Dean/Castiel.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own them.**

* * *

Dean was back at Bobby's now; there wasn't anywhere else he could think of to go. He'd been staying here for a few weeks now and had seen Bobby all of three times: the first, the day after they admitted defeat and checked Sam into the hospital, when Bobby had tried to be that perfect father figure and attempted to get Dean to _talk;_ the second, four days later, when he tried to get Dean to eat; the third and final time, three days ago, when he begged Dean to leave the damn room and do _something, anything…. _Dean couldn't. He wanted to, or he thought he did, or maybe he once had…? But he couldn't do anything now. There were too many thoughts and memories snarling and clawing and crushing at his mind, and he didn't know where to even begin to sort them out, so he just didn't. He didn't think; he didn't move; he didn't do more than breathe in and out. Some days even that was too much for him. Those days the crushing pain outweighed the numbness and he was forced to curl up tightly, gasping with panic. Those days it felt like the world was closing in on him, swallowing him whole: like he was once again buried alive, trapped deep under the earth clawing his way to the surface.

Today had been better than most. He had, over an unknown portion of time, managed to drag himself to the bedroom door. He'd opened it, dragged in the tray of food—long cold now—Bobby had left there for him in hope that Dean would eventually eat it, and had lethargically consumed the contents of the tray. He should, by all rights, have energy now, but he was just as hollow inside as before. He was sitting once more on the edge of his bed, beer in hand. It was open, but he hadn't found the will to drink any yet. He wasn't sure if he ever would.

Dean had never been broken like this before. He had broken after Hell, but that aching wrongness had been inside him. It had filled him and gagged him and choked him until he sobbed and retched when no one could see. This wrongness was around him. This was the evil kind of wrong that always prevailed: nothing, _nothing _he did ever made a difference. Fate and the universe were entwined together, united against him, making sure that everything that _could _go wrong did. He had handled it, ignored it, drowned his sorrows, but now he had lost too much and he just couldn't take it anymore.

Usually he drank himself into a stupor to ignore his pain instead of dealing with it, but he'd never been this kind of broken before. He was afraid that if he lost the fragile control of his mental state he would end up like Sam: unable to cope. He knew he was almost there already.

An idle thought escaped into his awareness, a harmless one: he wondered if maybe this meant he was depressed. Dean thought it pretty damn likely he was. He had no one to deny it at, so he let the thought drift away like confetti in the wind and lapsed back into emptiness. He drifted there.

A soft flutter of wings was his only warning before Castiel appeared in front of him. "Dean." It took him a few moments, but eventually he looked up to meet the angel's eyes. "I'm sorry about Sam."

It was a testament to how well Cas knew Dean that he didn't say "I told you so". Contrarily, it instilled a slight unrest in Dean; he had accepted the angel's social awkwardness as a constant, as a fact of the way the world worked. Now, when everything was falling apart, the angel retained a human compassion that just made everything that much more surreal.

"You will find a way to help you brother," Cas told him. It wasn't the empty reassurance Dean expected, but rather a calm certainty. Castiel's unwavering faith in him did little to make Dean feel better, though, and he dropped his eyes.

"Don't you have better things to do? Angel wars to fight?" His voice was rough from disuse, but he didn't care enough to clear his throat.

"Bobby was worried," Castiel informed him. Dean gave a nearly imperceptible nod, but other than that no movement indicated that he had heard Cas's words. "_I _was worried."

Dean had to look up after that admission, but the angel's face was as placid as ever. Slowly, so slowly, he blinked and nodded. "Thanks?" He hadn't meant for it to come out as a question.

Castiel sighed. "I know you are angry—"

"I'm not angry." Maybe he had been once, but fury was now long gone. It was a faded memory hidden at the back of the shelf, dusty from neglect.

Cas shot him an annoyed glance, a silent chastisement for interrupting his words. "Fine, not angry, but hurt—"

"I'm not hurt, either," Dean told him. The angel's glare should have melted him, but Dean didn't even feel the sting.

"My _point," _Castiel all but growled out, "is that you have been through this before. Your path has never been easy, but you have withstood all of the trials this far, Dean. You will survive this."

Dean felt something as he looked up into the angry-yet-determined eyes of this angel, his angel, the angel who had rescued and relied on him in equal parts. As he looked into those deep blue eyes, he felt well and truly lost. "But I _break, _Cas," Dean admitted. He had no pride left to lose now, and he had to trust Castiel anways; Cas had always been there for Dean. Castiel was more consistent that his father, than Bobby, than even Sam. "I break more each time and there has to be an end to it! I'm going to break and then nothing will be able to fix me." The _like Sam _went unspoken, but Cas understood.

Dean knew that Cas understood and it would have been a relief if he hadn't been so lost, so scared of losing what little he had left. He could see the angel's concern as Cas reached out and lay his palm against Dean's head. The pain lessened, not entirely but enough, and the crushing, pounding weight in his skull was _finally _gone. Dean could breathe again, could think again, and it was like that first gasp of air when he'd resurfaced from Hell. "How'd you do that?" he asked quietly, afraid to move away from the angel. He wasn't ready to risk losing this clarity yet.

Cas let go but sat down next to Dean. "I won't let you break, Dean."

Dean wanted to point out that Cas hadn't necessarily _let _Sam's soul break either, but he also wanted to believe the angel. He decided to, for now, let it go.

They sat in silence for a long while. "Why _are _you here?" Dean asked after a while. "I… thank you, but…." All he got was a sigh for his troubles, but with Cas a sigh was enough. "Angel battles not going well?"

"It's not your problem," Cas told him, but Dean could tell Cas was suffering with a crushing weight of his own. Dean didn't have magical mind reading powers like Cas did, but he had one weapon left in his arsenal. So he turned and his lips met Castiel's, gently at first. He coaxed out a response, hand tangling in Cas's hair, and marveled that there had to be _something _human left in this angel because for a guy who'd never been kissed… well, he wasn't that bad at this. Not bad at all.

When Dean finally pulled away Cas gave him an odd, calculating look. It was a look that Dean hadn't seen since the first days after he'd met the angel, when Castiel had carefully studied everything Dean had done. He remembered how constantly surprised the angel had been by every word, it seemed, that left Dean's mouth. He remembered how Cas had trusted Dean even though he couldn't understand anything Dean did, had confided his greatest secrets in Dean anyways. Suddenly, his not-so-completely-platonic feelings for the angel made a whole lot of sense. He was just surprised that he hadn't seen it before; though, this kind of thing was Sam's forte, not his, and he suspected that his brother may have known all along. Still, that familiar smile made Dean's world re-align just a little bit.

Dean covered his awkwardness with a smirk, as usual, and a shrug. "We can't all have mind-bending powers," he reminded Cas. "Just have to work with what God gave us." He watched the angel catch the innuendo in his words and faintly blush; he grinned. "Should go find Bobby," he muttered. "The old man might want to know I'm alive." Cas nodded, watching Dean as he rose to leave the room, but he called out after him as Dean reached the door. "Yeah?"

"Happy Valentine's Day," the angel told Dean, smirking right back at him. It was a beautiful, downright sexy expression that should be illegal for the reaction it induced in him, and Dean was left staring in awe as his angel vanished. Ever so slightly, things were looking up.

* * *

**~Reviews are love (and it's Valentine's Day!)~**


End file.
